Money matters

According to the European Union Survey on Income and Living Condition, children with single parents have a poverty risk almost twice as high as the average poverty risk for all children (34% against 19%).

Overall, 42 per cent of children and adults living in single-parent households face poverty.

“There is an increasing number of single-parent households across the Union, and they are more vulnerable than other types of families” Marie-Anne Paraskevas, from European Commission’s DG Employment stressed when presenting the figures at a press conference.

According to our readers, it is not so much the little money they make but what's being left for them to live on.

If you work enough you have enough... the greatest untruth of all!

"My daughter is 9 years old. Like every other human being, she thinks that if her mother works these long hours like I do, we can do something on the weekends.

"But hell, no! There can never make enough money, or if I do, it is being taken from us by the state who then cuts our income support." (Reader from Belgium)

How well or how bad our single mums are coping depends on if they have a job or not and if not, how the state support works.

Italian mother-of-one Claudia believes her government neglects the need of single parents like her:

"From an economic point of view I manage, but many women are not in my situation and are really struggling. The state doesn't help single mothers. They receive the same allowances just like any other family."

600 kilometers away in neighboring Austria, the situation is different says a single mum there:

"Because my daughter is only 1 year old and she will only get a space in the nursery from the age of 3, I haven't started working yet.

"We live of the child support (790 €) and alimonies the child father finally started to pay after he was forced to do so by the child agency.

Now we receive his money (190 €) regularly and we're coping pretty well."